Source: Game Top
In the gaming industry, developers will project some unique feelings about the products they have worked so hard to make. If the time period for the development of the game is long enough, then the emotion injected into it will only be more.
But for Meow-chan and Mi Xiu, the "husband and wife file", the significance of the hand-drawn wind search game "Sophia the Traveler" jointly developed by the two is more than that. Sophia was born from a vertical painting and eventually came out as a game, "she" is not only the first solo game of their own that the two have been engaged in game development for nearly 20 years, but also their thoughts and perceptions of life.
"Sophia the Traveler" lasted 8 years. In the past 8 years, Meow-chan and Mixiu's daughter have gone from croaking to entering the elementary school campus, and the two also see Sophia as their other child in the virtual world: "We want her to be good, and we will nurture her well." As for the results, I think it's good to just let it be – we do our best, and God will give you the answer. ”
The following is Meow-chan's self-description (the content has been adjusted for ease of reading):
Starting from scratch, the "husband and wife" solo development road
Mi Xiu and I entered the game industry in 2006 and started working, so we are industry veterans. He's been working as an artist in a game company, and I started as a planner, and then I changed to UI. Over the years, we have done everything from terminal games to web games, and even 999, but it may be because the games we made at that time were a little bigger, and the company size and number of people were relatively large, so we never considered making an independent game, nor did we think that a few people could get a game.
And we used to be relatively homely people, we didn't deliberately observe the market, we only thought that we had a job, could make some money, and could do something literary and artistic, so it was good to maintain this state. But then, perhaps because I got older, I felt that it was boring to be in this state of not being rich or poor and going to work day after day, so I began to look for the so-called meaning of life.
In 2015, we came to Shenzhen to settle down, and by chance we met some people, and found that small teams could also play games, so we slowly began to get in touch with solo travel. In particular, we read the article on Fat Pudding and Little Cotton, and talked a few times face-to-face, which strengthened our determination.
Sophia's tribute to Mr. Pumpkin
During that period, the era of mobile games came in full swing, capital flocked to it, the environment became very bad, and many people saw through the game circle and slowly left, but Mi Xiu always had a dedication and love for games, and I said why don't we do solo games together.
The first one we did was a shooter called Alice's Dream, and there was a lot of people in the team, everyone was in a free creative state, each with their own ideas, but there was a lack of a key person to come out and make decisions. Coupled with the unevenness of people's hearts, some people think that making an indie game can make you rich overnight and immediately reach the peak of life, so this project ended hastily not long after.
Later, we started working on our second project: the roguelike action game Hundred Ghosts. At the time, the game was not finished due to a lack of ability and underestimating the difficulty of developing the meat pigeon game, but Michaeu and I found satisfaction in making the game - or rather, reached a state of flow.
When I was pregnant in 2017, I thought I should prepare something for my children in advance, so I found the picture book "Where's Willie". I couldn't travel because I was pregnant, so I thought of asking Michau to draw me a standing picture and let her go out to play instead of me. At that time, Sophia didn't even have a name, just the image of a little girl.
Now that we have the image of Sophia, I thought it would be better for the two of us to do something around this girl. Mi Xiu is an artist, and I'm good at planning, but no one can do programming. Someone has to do it, Mi Xiu is a very emotional thinking person, it's hard to learn the program from scratch, my logical thinking is at least better than his, just say or I will learn the program. After working for a while, a friend was able to help with the program, and I didn't feel the need to fight with myself, so I acted as a bridge between the program and the map editor - it can be understood as a bridge between the art and the program.
In fact, the "husband and wife" development game will occasionally quarrel, but after communication, they will soon compromise with each other. The most important thing is that the husband and wife live together, know everything well, and even if they have no money, they can work together to grit their teeth and finish the game, unlike working outside, if you run out of money, you are likely to run away. Moreover, we have been running in for so long, and the development efficiency is also higher.
Being Sophia heals both the player and herself
There are many players who are attracted by Sophia's art style, and think that it is very warm, cute, and healing, and even think that we are better at hand-drawn style, but in fact, the earliest art style of the game is not what it is now.
Mi Xiu has been engaged in game art for many years, and his personal preferences have also experienced several periods such as "World of Warcraft" European and American realistic style, Kim Hyung-tae Korean style, etc., and he can control a lot of painting styles. At first, it was hard to describe what I painted, it was really European and American, but I preferred the Japanese and Korean style. Therefore, it took a long time to grind the character design and color matching of "Sophia the Traveler", including making color cards, whether it is flat painting or gradient, and it took a long time to explore and iterate to set the current art tone.
But when it comes to choosing a city, we're a little more decisive. I'm a science and engineering woman, and when I encounter a major decision, I always feel that I should combine big data analysis to see what cities players around the world yearn for the most and where they want to travel to the most. Based on the data of several websites, it was found that 80%~90% of people chose Venice. In addition, Michaeu read some books when he was a child, and he especially liked Venice Water City, so we decided to choose Venice as our first stop. Anyway, it's a travel game, and I can't go to another city at the next stop.
The problem was that neither Michaeu nor I had ever been to Venice, so we had to draw in front of Google Maps, travel books, and photos of friends coming back. But after all, looking at the photos is different from the experience of on-site travel, and the result is a "big oolong": Mi Xiu followed Google Maps to draw the church and found that the angle was wrong, and he had no choice but to redraw it, wasting a month in vain.
Embarrassing to embarrassing, in the end, we made a 100% restoration of some classic scenes of Venice in three major levels, from the Mac's Basilica, various docks, hotels, restaurants, and coffee houses, to small houses, gardens, and rooftops. One day, a very good brother of mine was helping us fix some bugs that I couldn't solve on my own, and he was stunned when he saw the biggest scene of the whole game in the eighth level through the Unity backstage, and said what are you doing? He was so moved by tears in his eyes.
Although Sophia the Traveler is a travel game, players may not necessarily have the concept of travel. Just like there are crowds in the book "Where is Willie", I don't necessarily have to go to the target people, I really want to see what everyone is doing. It's like if you use a telescope to observe the living conditions of all beings in the world from the perspective of God and satisfy a little "voyeurism", I think it's quite fun.
So I imagine all kinds of lives and moods in this microcosm, you are playing the piano, he is dancing, thinking of everyone's movements, details, and writing them down when they think about it, and then throwing it to Mi Xiu to draw, maybe Mi Xiu has his own animation talent, and in the end he has drawn them all, there are more than 2,000 such villains in total.
In addition to the scenes and characters, we also designed some four-panel comics to connect the levels with the story. We wanted to give players a travel experience and draw a hand-drawn story of what they might do. These stories can be understood as easter eggs, you can understand it, and it doesn't matter if you don't understand it, it doesn't affect the game.
The sound effects were simulated by me, Michaeu, and our daughter. Considering that Venice is a tourist city, we also imitated Chinese, English, Japanese, Korean, Cantonese, Hokkien and other dialects in the dialogue of the characters, and the rain and dew were evenly wet.
Some people may ask, is the picture book game for children? I don't think so. Our daughter is playing in the first grade of elementary school, but you see the characters in The Big Bang Theory are all adults, and they're also playing Where's Willy.
We wanted Sophia the Traveler to heal the players, and we healed ourselves in the process of making the game. Because we enjoyed the whole process very much. Michaeu was very relaxed, and he kept coaxing himself to eat at the Italian restaurant Salizeriya while he painted, imagining that he was traveling in Venice. Then I complained to him that Saizeriya was a fast food restaurant owned by a Japanese company.
To make an indie game is to hover on the edge of dream and reality
From the idea of doing "Sophia the Traveler", it took almost 8 years to go online, the cost of this time is too high, the youth is gone, and there are too many things in the middle, which is quite bitter to think about.
The birth of a child had a great impact on us during this period. During the pregnancy test, the doctor told us that the child was at risk of Down's, but he couldn't confirm it, and even if he was born, he still had to continue to observe, which was embarrassing. But at that time, I wanted to make a bet with God that this child would be healthy, so even though we spent two or three years in fear, in the end we won the bet and everything was perfect. After winning the bet, we look back and feel that we were too conservative and cautious.
Another layer of influence after having children is that the two of us have become a little more mature, no longer as literary and artistic as before, and we are satisfied with just shopping and playing after work. Now I want to do more things to make our own lives more meaningful and bring more meaning to our children. Making Sophia the Traveler is actually one of those things, something we can leave to our daughter and let her know that it's something her mom and dad made.
For example, our daughter watched the cartoon "Little Princess Sophia" and pointed to the image drawn by Mi Xiu and said that it was "Sophia", and Sophia's name was officially decided; after watching "The Big Secret of Pets", she said that she wanted to take Mike on a trip, so we added Mike the dog to the game, and Polly the parrot was from "Peppa Pig...... These images are the wishes of our daughters.
Of course, children also bring more realistic problems to the family - expenses, to raise this gold-swallowing beast, you can't easily resign,
Because there is a price to be paid for naked resignation. Although we are doing indie games, in fact, the two have been doing a division of labor, trying to ensure that one person has a job as much as possible, and I dare not say how much money I save, but at least to cover all the expenses of the family.
In order to subsidize my family, I also researched financial management myself. To be honest, if you have to suggest someone else to do something, I think it is really necessary to learn about finance, and if you understand financial knowledge, your thinking may be raised to a higher dimension to think about problems. Of course, you don't want to get rich overnight in finance, but you should think of it as a long-term snowball process. In short, I think investing is something worth learning for a lifetime, it is a process of cultivating the mind, and it can help you find a balance between emotion and reason.
It's really not easy to survive in the gap between life and ideals, so ordinary people really can't easily ALL IN when they make indie games. A friend of ours said he wanted to rent a garage and hire two people to travel alone, and I said the most important thing was to find a way to survive first.
In addition to the anxiety about money, I sometimes feel very impetuous during the development process, always worrying about whether it will work or whether it will sell well, just like jumping back and forth between dreams and reality. In contrast, Mi Xiu is very good at regulating himself, and he even meditates on his own, which I really can't learn.
The other problem is that we actually thought about making the game a simulation before, because the cute art style itself is very suitable, but considering that the development cycle of the program is at least a year or two, and there are only two of us, we finally gave up.
Maybe it's because we recognize a lot of practical factors, and we are also cautious about the income of "Sophia the Traveler", which is basically in line with the form we wanted to make in the first place, but this genre is still very niche after all, and we lower our expectations, maybe the surprise will be a little bigger. Anyway, we make games a bit like raising children, you cultivate it in the way you expect, if it meets your expectations, it's good, but if it doesn't reach it, it won't be too sad and disappointed, and then think about what can be adjusted and improved.
In any case, compared to working in a company, making your own indie game has one more thing: hope.
Everyone should have a dream of traveling the world
Although we have made such a Venetian-themed travel game, until now, we have never been to Venice due to time and various busyness. I think everyone should have a dream of traveling around the world, but if you don't have money or time, you can't get out.
Maybe I have a bit of romanticism, I think that the traditional concept of us Chinese is a bit like ascetics, not as open as Westerners think, their concept is to go wherever they want, there is no baggage. And our culture is not so open, because of Michaeu's work before, we went to Norway for a while, and at that time we were timid and didn't go out much.
In fact, when comparing the real scene of Venice through photos and Google Maps, we found that Europeans and Americans are quite good at living. Their gardens, windows can often see some decorations, furnishings, and even sofas on the balcony, which seems to be how comfortable and how to come, and life is very ritualistic. In contrast, we may consider rain, damp and moldy when we put things on the balcony, and we have a lot of concerns. In contrast, I feel that the lifestyle of Europeans and Americans is very relaxed.
In the final analysis, the reason why we do travel games is also to meet the desire of players to go out and see, just to say that the meaning and harvest of travel for everyone is different, and travel bloggers have always been popular because they have done what many people want to do but can't do.
This game has a similar layer of meaning in it. Wasn't it during this time that Hayao Miyazaki's animated film "What Life Do You Want to Live?" the title is a tribute to a book by Japanese writer Genzaburo Yoshino, which I have read and been inspired by before. For me and Michaeu, being able to leave something behind and express some outlook on life with the help of games or other means is a more ideal life.
In my opinion, life might as well be bold. I am a multi-threaded person, and I have more interests, learning about financial management, investing, reading, studying, participating in clubs, even if I don't make games one day, I have a lot of other things I want to do, as I said earlier, games are one of the ways I find meaning. Mi Xiu is more single-threaded, has a true love for games, and is willing to do it for the rest of his life.
We now also have some follow-up plans, hoping to make some new attempts, while retaining the original features, such as the hand-drawn art style, the image of Sophia, the basic gameplay of finding things and finding differences, and a more warm and healing style. We all want to be the second, third, and fourth generations of "Sophia the Traveler". The world thinks that life is too hard, and our own life is sometimes quite hard, I hope Sophia can bring everyone a moment of relief and healing.